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Taylor Clement

Home Featured Authors & Panelists Featured Participant Lineup 2026 Taylor Clement

Taylor Clement, a native of Lake Charles, Louisiana, is a writer, poet, and researcher. She holds a PhD from Florida State University, and her work has been featured in Renaissance Studies and Word & Image. She currently teaches professional writing courses at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

 

Schedule

10:45 am to 11:45 am
Outside Museum, West Tent
The Louisiana Poet Laureate Presents Louisiana Poets, Vol I
Taylor Clement, do not destroy this: Poems
Rodney Jones, The Body and the End of Time: Poems Selected & New, 1985-2025
Justin Lacour, A Reading from the Book of Panic
Jonathan Penton, A Limited Number of Miracles: A Walk Through the New Orleans Sculpture Garden
Jennifer Polson Peterson, Degenerate Era of an Expanding Universe: Poems
with Gina Ferrara

Noon to 12:45 pm
Cavalier House Books Tent
Book Signing

do not destroy this: Poems

A warning and a prayer against future storms, do not destroy this stands as testament to the indomitable spirit of survivors confronted by the inexhaustible forces of nature. In this debut collection, Taylor Clement celebrates the joy and grit of living in the deep south during compound disasters brought on by climate change. These poems explore what happens when ancestral lands and family homes are gutted for years and sacred spaces become empty and unusable. The poems lay bare the threads that hold us together when everything else is gone. Part love song and part elegy, do not destroy this explores why people keep returning to places like Lake Charles.